


The Lost Prince

by SmutWritersGoddess (orphan_account)



Category: The Lost Prince - Fandom
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Ancient History, Angst, Aphrodisiacs, BDSM, Character trauma, Developed Realtionship, Dominance, Giant Magical Cats, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hand Jobs, Intense, Kingdoms, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Magic, Magic War, Magical Tattoos, Magical Weapons, Romantic Angst, Slavery, Spells & Enchantments, Submission, anal preparation, powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-06-28 11:25:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19811305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/SmutWritersGoddess
Summary: A young mage finds himself suddenly in the hands of a powerful lord in a strange and new land with different sorts of magic and common knowledge. Having been enslaved in said land for two years, the mage had bitter views about the new world from the very start. But what happens when he reveals secrets lost to mankind for generations that rock the foundations of time and magic as the rest of the world knows it?





	1. A Theif's Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shatoru](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16720518) by [Nethvester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nethvester/pseuds/Nethvester). 



> A huge thank you to Nethvester who basically provided 50% of plot elements with her story: Shatoru. This book was practically formed around her ideas. She's pretty great. Be sure to check out her stories.

Akihito’s toes lay victim to the icy bite of the snow as he trudged alongside the sheeted carriage. Hell, even the guards on the back of thing were wearing fur-coated, leather-mended boots. His tired sandals barely held together with each step. And while the not-so-modest guards sported thick tunics and undershirts, long leather trousers, and fur cloaks as long as they were tall, Akihito had to take shelter in the long tunic (that was as thin as his finger was wide), short britches, and small sandals. Under his "beloved master's" orders, he made to walk beside the six-bull-drawn carriage and in the wind and icy flakes; as if there wasn’t any room for another. He was made dreadfully aware of his dry mouth and frozen hair with each tremor. And if he walked behind the carriage, he found, the guards were evidently notorious for throwing their cigarette butts in his line of sight. Charring his lashes at some point, he’d learned reluctantly to keep to the side.

It was never ending, the valley trapping and weaving the winds to chase the snow to his already freezing form. How warm it must have been in the carriage. The warm spell he’d been instructed to cast inside the carriage for his oh-so-honorable lord held firm, draining him of energy and still being left to the cold. If the spell retired, it wasn’t any fault his considering his current state.

As he _considered_ dropping the spell with the excuse of starvation, an arrow hissed behind him, and he swiftly took refuge in the snow on his weary reflex. The arrow wasn’t for him. A sort of garbled chocked sound came from the guard sitting on the back left of the carriage as he reached for the arrow rooted in his heart—his hand dropped, and breath left his throat. The other guard grabbed his sword and searched for the source of the attack from the hillside—much too late, as another arrow was launched into his neck.

The driver caught wind halted the cattle. And was then shot himself, first in the shoulder, then in the diaphragm. The bulls huffed and swung their mighty necks in disarray. His master peaked out of the hide sheets, “What’s happened? Why are we stopped?”

“My lord—” Akihito went to answer.

“I wasn’t asking _you,_ boy,” The man hissed, “What has my driver to say?”

Akihito kept his mouth shut. His master waited for a ghost’s response. Then, he scrunched his face where Akihito lay in the snow, panicked as one might be when the hellfire arrows start and yet it’s freezing, “What have you done, boy? Get up and address your master properly.”

Akihito made to stand as another arrow announced its hiss behind him. He fell flat on his back as it whizzed above him and hit the door frame of the carriage. The man flinched, his terror evident, “Good evening, passersby. Might I ask where you’re headin’?”

A robust man walked before them, black leather _everything_ (boots, trousers, tunic, undershirt, hat, cloak; hell, maybe even his socks).

His lord just stared, aware of the harsh truth he now lie in.

Akihito stood, brushed off the ice, and spoke, unwavering, “Well we _were_ heading to a manor on the outside of the capital, but I now fear we won’t ever make it, will we?”

The man made a sinister sort of look, “I’m afraid not, for I’m here to strip you of all you have,” and with that, he snapped his fingers like some sort of god with the lightning’s power.

Men in the hundreds flocked to the carriage seemingly appearing out of nowhere. His “master” nearly sobbed. But this was Akihito’s chance. Perhaps if he _helped_ the thieves—

“Boy, _do_ something!” Akihito internally groaned and reluctantly turned to the pitiful man.

“Like what?”

The man spat, “Why, cast your magic, of course! Do the fiery spell or shoot their arrows back at them or _something!_ ”

Akihito smiled then bowed in apology, “My lord, you made me swear to serve you, not protect you.”

The man stepped out of his long-frozen carriage and flared, “You _ungrateful_ surēbu! You dare correct our contract?”

“Yes. And, correction: _your_ contract.”

“But you swore! You— you’re to be my slave until the contract is renewed!”

“So that you may torture me into signing it once again? You wouldn’t have inked my neck if you didn’t intend to enslave me for life!” He gestured to the plain, stark black band around his neck, “And, I’ve read it through; it says nowhere that I will be your guard.”

The Leatherman laughed behind him, “How embarrassing. A slave that has no dignity and that can _read!_ Let’s put the lord out of his misery, shall we?” The first twenty men raided happily into the carriage, throwing the lord aside to be stripped out of his gold chains and expensive fur in the bitter cold. He screamed bloody murder. Akihito merely stepped aside as they did what they pleased to the remains of carriage. Like children on Hearth’s Warming morning opening presents, they cheered and gawked at their findings.

“Oh, shut him up!” Cried one of the assailants. His master’s last plea was an undignified screech to the snowy earth, a victim of the end of a wicked blade; and that was that. Akihito was technically a free man. Now, the obstacle if the money-hungry men…

“Is that everything, boys?” The Leatherman called.

“Yeah, that’s the last of it, boss,” A greasy, pale man from inside the carriage said as he stepped out with a pouch of gold.

“Well then, now what to do with this lovely surēbu.”

Akihito stared numbly; playing this right was crucial to his cause. But he had to prepare for the worst. He snapped his fingers behind his tunic and magic came to light in his palm, but it was only gathered, not formed. “We could sell ‘em,” the greasy, pale man huffed as he trotted by Akihito, taking a whiff of him as he passed.

“Maybe we can chain him and take him with us. The rich one said he can cast magic,” An archer’s response, setting his bow straight in the snow.

“It could prove useful,” Leatherman drew his sword from a black leather sheath; Akihito hummed quietly, forming his type of magic gathering, “However,” Akihito opened his palm and released it, the magic flowing behind the carriage to the reins and rings tethered to the bulls and breaking them silently, “dead men tell no tales, you see.”

He edged toward Akihito with his sword poised just as the bulls took off stampeding down the snowy, foggy valley. “What the— boss! The cattle!”

But they were long gone. Leatherman grabbed Akihito’s collar and snarled, “You did that, didn’t you, boy?” Akihito freed himself with a grunt and stealthily started up a different sort of magic, “Well, if I was going to make it quick, I’m certainly not now. Take your last words, slave, you're lucky I'm a man of honor.”

Akihito looked to his fallen possy; _clearly,_ he thought. Nonetheless, he opened his mouth and began to sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to update every two to three weeks.


	2. Bane of Fire

Long and perilous was an understatement if applied to the journey taken by the lord and his party. The Frigumentai season usually didn’t start off so… Terrible. And recent missives had warned his second of an upcoming blizzard. If it still weren’t here, it could’ve fooled him; the snow piled on the shoulders of their cloaks and the peaks of their hoods. Where Akira was once the lead of the four, he let Nishigaki take over with him having the most robust build to take the brunt of the snow. He treaded second with his second-hand behind him, a slender man with dark hair and glasses, the bookish type. Behind him, Malina kept pace and let her blonde hair down under her hood to offer more insulation.

Climbing the hill buried (or underscored) in the snow was a treacherous feat, but they’d finally made it up and past the clearing—

“Sire!” Akira spun his head at the sharp tone of Kowatashi’s (his second's) voice. He gestured down the large hill off to the side into the valley. Hundreds of men were herded around a Malliumfoss carriage. A lord’s carriage.

“They didn’t stand a chance,” Kowatashi concluded as they subdued the man and stripped him of gold and clothing.

“My lord,” Malina spoke and removed her hood, “The boy, he’s a mage.”

Akira, a tall, broad man, with his sleek, raven hair concealed under his hood, looked for himself with his dark, gold-flecked eyes. Malina was right. The boy was gathering magic behind his tunic, the barest of clothing; a slave? One of the thieves slew the lord with the end of a j-blade, and he fell limp in the snow. Akira narrowed his eyes. Surely, they wouldn’t place the same fate upon the mage? But the leader drew his sword; thus, Akira removed his gloves.

“My lord, if you reveal yourself now, I’m afraid we may become their next targets,” Nishigaki, his chief guard, and the largest of the four, was correct. But to just sit and watch a fellow mage, illegally enslaved, be slain by a greasy thief in the bitter night...

Still, he handed Kowatashi his gloves, “If we were to surround and search for an opportunity—"

“Or kill them all off,” The three men looked to Malina. “They’ve probably killed simple Journeymen. We’d be doing Malliumfoss a favor by killing off a band this large.”

The men may have considered it, watching the bulls run off and pondering what the young mage had in store from atop that hill.

“I say we wait,” Came the terse response of his second-hand.

“And I say that’s a good plan,” Akira sighed grudgingly. Then, a voice broke through his thoughts: a beautiful tenor, singing. Somehow breaking through the wind vortex harbored by the valley. Seconds later, laughter filled the crevice in the hills with a mighty roar. The singing, however, stood against it: that laughter that teased the young mage of having lost his marbles.

To anyone else, that laughter would seem well-placed. But not to Akira and his men, no. In fact, they all four raced to the slippery hill’s edge and gaped in disbelief, eyes wide, wonderous, and expecting

Laughter roared and filled his ears as he struggled to keep the song smooth and alive. Booming so loud, it hurt his eardrums. He started to shape the spell form, singing higher.

“Alright,” Leatherman sniggered in between his words, “Alright, boy,” He gasped for a bout of air, “My, my. That was a beautiful sound. Did you think we’d take you with us for you to be our singing maiden boy?” The valley burst into laughter once more. When Akihito didn’t stop to reply, the man sneered. “Well, you had your chance I suppose. Nighty night, Song Bird.”

With that, Leatherman raised his sword to strike Akihito in the ribs; just as the mage released his internal gathering with a particularly high note in a language not truly laid out for the thieves.

The valley was swallowed and engulfed in a storm of fire, the eye being the young boy. The thieves howled and shrieked, their clothes catching the flames as easily as burrs. Akihito felt something like satisfaction as the stench of burning leather filled his nose. But the warm spell cast on the carriage of the now impudent lord had drained him so plenty. He was proud the spell was so replete, but he had little time to savor it before the darkness of the night consumed him even in the bright glow of a gargantuan fire-spell.

Heat and lively orange bloomed on their faces as they stepped back from the ledge, witnesses of an awesome power. The smell of seared flesh and shrills of terror filled the valley for what felt like hours. When it stopped, Akira raised his hands and chanted. His controlled forms gathering in multiple heaps throughout the now polluted night sky.

Watery ice piled on the flames, inundating the storm with frigid water not quite frozen. The quartet made its way down to the bare mud and trees; once dormant in the winter temperance, now lost forever. Stepping past the victims of Hell’s storm and to the source of it all: a limp form of a boy’s body, encircled in a patch of snow as if it were a shield.

Akira knitted his brow and sighed. Of course, the spell didn’t inflict on the caster, so the slave-mage held a dash of experience. But then the dash of something else…

“Malina,” Akira called her to his side.

She responded immediately, “The sword lost its strike mid-way. It shouldn’t be too deep,” she knelt down to the boy. He lay turned and clenching his bloodied side smothered on the snow, unconscious. She turned him over carefully and grabbed her scalpel, tearing out a large hole in his tunic. No bones showed, and the cut was indeed shallow, cutting only through the first layer of muscle on his left rib. The blood made it seem worse than it was.

“Sire,” She worked as she spoke, “I can heal this, but he’s already shivering. He’ll catch cold by tomorrow.”

“Then count on it. Nishigaki, pull him under your jacket and on your shoulder when the wound is sealed. We’re taking him with us.” Nishigaki bowed, and Malina started chanting. “Sire,” Kowatashi emerged from the charred carriage, adjusting his glasses and wiping away soot, “His legal papers.” He handed them to Akira who dusted the of the roll. It was rather drenched, but the fire caught it first if only for a moment in the conceal of the carriage. The edges were charred. But not the bulk of the text.

He read through it, searching for signs that he was a mage or that he was in debt. He found none.

“He _was_ illegally enslaved,” the man murmured.

“Yes, but he signed the contract stating he was loyal and willing.”

Akira scoffed, “Willing my fur-coated ass.” He turned to Malina and his guard, “Finish up. We're moving out soon.”


	3. Connecting Powers

Akira placed his hand firmly on the cliff’s wall, chanting and forming a signature Aspersion spell. Seconds in, the wall of solid granite and sediment glowed in the cracks, split and moved aside to reveal a cave, smoothed over by nature or man’s hands. With all inside, Kowatashi went about setting a retractable door via Transfer spells.

Nishigaki set the boy on a fleece laid out by Malina, “Ko? If you wouldn’t mind prepping the kettle?”

“No, I won’t mind. But I’ll have to prepare the pot first. The master eats before we treat him.”

“No,” Akira strode over to the tremoring boy, “You will treat his ailment before we eat. Malina, set the fire.”

“Ah,” Kowatashi stumbled, “With all due respect, my lord. The boy can wait. If he—

“Kowatashi, retrieve the kettle, the herbs, and the heat crystals then we can talk,” Akira was immovable on the subject.

Malina giggled as she went about coaxing a fire to life in the pre-set pit of wood and surrounding rocks. She seldom held anything in her eyes; and when she did, it was joy over someone else’s embarrassment, wild interest in dangerous or otherwise detrimental subjects that didn't involve herself, or resentment over her own oppressive treatment (Akira seemed to be the exception to most).

Kowatashi bowed, “Of course, Ishida-sama.”

Akira knelt and took the boy’s head in his hands. He chanted lowly and commanded the ice and water in the boy’s hair to dissipate. The clothes we a lost cause, drenched and frigid; he went about stripping the boy entirely and dragging the fleece he rested on to the fire. Now in the light, the young mage’s traits truly showed themselves in a way that a snowy night couldn’t. Akira, needless to say, wasn’t pleased with what he saw: tens of lash marks, all most likely from the whips in surēbu reform camps. And a particularly large one across his chest… It wasn’t from a whip. He second glanced. Sure, some of them were from the crack of leather, but the majority of them were from… Blades? That wasn’t a form of torture in the camps, and to have so many scars of different ages and forms set a variety that he couldn’t quite place. And that dark ring around his neck, signifying someone else’s complete and absolute ownership, made his stomach curl. If the boy would let him, he could remove the tattoo via a Transform spell, but it may be painful depending on how deep the ink ran under his skin.

On the other hand, when he looked past the marks, he could say he _was_ pleased with the carved structures and dark-toned colors that shone brilliantly in the firelight, the curve of his sides, his detectable shape. A dark shadow cast in his face with a certain, unspeakable _desire_ that took effort to subdue entirely. Still, it was entertaining to indulge in it for a moment: the refined pecs separating the beautiful porcelain skin on his neck and the sea of jaded, corded, smoothed abdominal muscle funneling _perfectly_ into the tight britches cut midthigh. It took a good amount of self-control not to bunch the light, worn leather into his hand and the reveal the pale-sweet of his inner thighs, ripe to the core…

His lips curled as he reeled his thoughts back some. One could only assume the young mage could fight. But then why conjure a fire spell?

“The tea’s ready, my lord,” Kowatashi announced as he knelt by Akira’s side and poured the piping liquid into a mug.

To the second hand/ secretary/ maid man’s surprise, Akira took the mug in his own hand and lifted it to the small, trembling mouth of the boy. With his head propped up, the tea went down _easier,_ but the boy was hardly conscious. He gagged and sputtered every other swallow, reflexes or not.

Malina came to Akira’s other side with a second trap-animal’s fleece and covered the boy.

“Kĩĩnai,” Malina faced her lord, “What do you see?”

Malina addressed the boy of light brown shoulders that glowed orange in the firelight, the light brown hair that dipped blonde at the ends, and the gentle features of boy’s face. “I’d say he’s confident and holds more than he’ll soon reveal. As for more on his disposition, I guess we’ll have to wait until he wakes.

“Akihito,” The three others looked to Nishigaki holding the roll of the dead lord’s papers, “Says his name is Akihito."

“Does it say a last name?” Malina called from over the flames.

“It doesn’t.”

“Nishigaki, Kowatashi, have the papers changed. Put him in my name and change the purchase dates to the last time I was in the capital.”

“Yes, sir,” Kowatashi grabbed the kettle and discarded mug.

“Nishigaki, how old is he?”

“It says he’s…” Nishigaki counted in his head, “Around twenty-seven, my lord.”

Akira shook his head, “That can’t be right. He’s much too young.”

“It’s what the purchase papers say.”

“Check the others.” Nishigaki did so.

“There’re no others about _him,_ ” Nishigaki droned as he proceeded to drop papers of the lord’s other “purchases” into the fire.

“You’re saying that his only papers are those of another’s ownership?”

“I afraid so, my lord.”

Akira sighed at that, “Alright well, we’ll take him with us, and if he can keep his spells in check, we should have no issues with taking him to the Republic with us.”

“Sire, if I may interject,” he proceeded only when Akira gave him a nod, “I wasn’t sure if the song he displayed earlier tonight was a diversion for the spell or if it was a spell formation method.”

“What are you suggesting, Kowatashi?”

“I’m saying if it was apart of the method, he might be using a sort of ancient magic known to a few.”

Akira narrowed his eyes at the boy. “Yes, I noticed as well.”

“Perhaps it might be dangerous to take him with us?”

Akira laughed, “He left no witnesses.”

“On the contrary, sire, he left us.” Kowatashi pushed his glasses up, “There could’ve been others.”

“True,” Akira admitted, “But I doubt it. I truly believe the only remaining witnesses were passenger pigeons having the feathers seared off their wings.”

There was a long pause before Kowatashi made a standing point, “He _sung,_ sire.”

A fire shone in Akira’s eyes as he looked down at the boy, “Yes, he did. It was exquisite.”

“Bards went extinct ages ago from their worth on the black market and the curses laid onto their bloodline.”

“You mean people killing them for wrongful beliefs. It was determined that bards held no evil spirits in their works. People killed them for their differences. Nothing more.”

“He shouldn’t be here,” Kowatashi protested.

“No? Because I think,” he pulled a strand of the boy’s hair out of his sleeping eyes, “he’s exactly where he should be.”

With that, Kowatashi smothered is argument and went about setting up the pot for the evening meal.

Swift and easy on his feet, the fresh scent of earth lush beneath him. No destination, just the branches of Folly Cedar for him to run up onto and jump from. The trees were massive. Centuries-old if that even came close. Their branches majestic and wider than three grown men, and when they stretched to the forest floor, they offered bridges to the center of their trunks.

His cares gone with the wind as he raced the clouds, jumping higher and higher still onto the larger-than-life branches. One slip might’ve meant certain fate, and it only made his heart ecstatic and up to the task. After all, the sky was the limit, and he was _so close._ He could almost taste the puffy lakes of white splashed in blotches across the endless, singing blue. The king of branches, as thin as his thigh but mighty and unswaying, and he was the crown. He held fast, kneeling and reaching for the mirage of blue—

A wave of red dashed across it, painting the scene crimson. He swiveled his head frantically, terror building up as screams came from where he’d come: his home kingdom. The young prince stared as another wave of physical, preening red magic formations came speeding at him.

Nishigaki woke with a start at the sound of crackling static. A bright red light in the form of lighting over the “guest’s” head.

“Ishida-sama!” They were all up now at Nishigaki’s cry, witnessing the phenomena, except Malina.

It cracked and spread and shone a terrible red loom over the cavern walls. Akira held his hands out and chanted loudly, words unintelligible and scrambled, Akira barely managed to counter the spell before it overtook the cave.

He fell back to the wall, coping with his delayed drowsiness kicking in. “Ishida-sama,” Kowatashi was at his side in a moment, “How can I help? Did you conjure too much?

“The boy’s spells…” Akira huffed.

“Yes. At this rate, we’ll have to leave him. If he can’t control himself then—"

“Grab a wool ribbon.”

Kowatashi paused, “Pardon, my lord?”

“Grab a wool ribbon and a blade. I’ll have to force a bond. Kĩĩnai Malina, Wake up.”

“Sire, I don’t advise a bond so…” Kowatashi searched his mind carefully, “Soon,” the smaller, standard man protested.

“It’s not up for debate, Kowatashi. Any mage of his caliber and in that state would have little control. At least with this, we can stop it before he hurts himself. Malina!” Akira raised his voice this time, “Did you not hear me? Get up!”

“Mmh~” The mound of furs twitched. A muffled response came out, “I heard you. I heard all of it,” She slowly rose and yawned, “Bond, Got it.”

Nishigaki retrieved the blade and Kowatashi had the ribbon. Akira knelt by the boy and grabbed his hand out from under the furs. When Milana finally came around, she took the ribbon and tied it around both of their wrists, “He’ll need to be awake. He’s also got quite the temperature. Do you think he’ll be able to complete the spell?”

“He’s getting there,” Akira looked closely at the fluttering eyes, “It should come easy considering a mage’s basic training.”

“We aren’t sure if he’s _had_ any training,” Nishigaki reinstated, “His papers didn’t even say he was a mage.”

“He knows more than he’s letting on,” Akira seemed fond. Sure enough, Akihito opened his eyes, rather heavily but opened, nonetheless. “Tell me your full name, boy.”

A voice, a baritone tore through his drowsy consciousness, and he tried, struggled to open his eyes just to _see_ who it was that could so smoothly rouse him from a cage of exhaustion-induced slumber. He saw gold. No jest, golden skin and gold-flecked eyes pierced into him, striking and numbing all at once.

He tried to speak. Really, he did. But it came out like a pained garble. His throat was a fired canyon (no pun intended) and worse, his sight was already failing him, threatening to throw him back into oblivion.

But the gold figure’s hand came over the blurring glaze, and soft words rumbled about the room. The hand touched the brim of his forehead at the tips between his eyes and a warm light illuminated from the palm. The weight from his eyes lifted, the pain in his throat dimmed, the fleece wasn’t eating his form at the dead strength displayed throughout his body, and he was able to breathe considerably easier. The spell, he realized, was Curator class.

He mustered the energy to try again. But was unsure what to say. If the golden stranger had spells, he could place his name in a Nominator spell and use his own title against him.

The stranger seemed to sense his thoughts, “I won’t ask again.” Stern, terse, and terrifying. Akihito was in no position to refuse.

“Fa Montekyiu Akihito,” he chocked it out and coughed and the stabbing itch in his throat.

“He’s lying!” Cried a lean figure in glasses, “No slave would have a third name, especially not an ancient honorific.”

“He’s not lying,” came a stunned female’s voice, and a blond woman materialized at his side, her yellow locks held in a low ponytail with strands of long bangs on either side of her pale face. She blocked the gold from the first stranger and the gold, he realized, was firelight, illuminating the cave.

“That doesn’t matter now. Akihito,” The larger stranger’s voice took hold of him, “can you sit up?”

“Ah-I—” a cough shook his form and took reign in his fiery throat. But the other man’s hand glowed once more and placed itself over Akihito’s neck.

Air came quicker and in lesser masses of pain, “Try now.”

The dark voice coerced him to speak, “I… Have not the idlest… Conceit whence I stay.”

The blond girl scoffed, “What, does he think he’s from a hundred years ago?”

“Malina,” the stranger warned.

“I’m serious!” She defended, “Who speaks like that…”

She trailed off at the stranger’s glare, “The ribbon, Malina.”

“Fine, fine.” She agreed grudgingly and pulled out a blade, "This might sting a little," she muttered as she slit open a cut, about a pinky-finger long, on his and the stranger's wrist. He winced, but before he could think about fighting her back, she stayed the blade on the cave ground and went about tying a bright ribbon, two inches thick, around his and the stranger’s raised wrists. Akihito just stared, dazed and confused (in a bit of pain) and ready to go back to sleep. The man didn’t ask him to sit up again, he just took the base of Akihito’s neck in his hand and held it up upon his knee.

Akihito had questions. Lots of questions: Who are you? Where am I? What are you doing? Is this real? When did you take my hand? Why'd you have to cut a hole in it? Why the ribbon? Are you made of gold? If not, then are you made of the sun?

So, maybe they weren’t _all_ sane and valid questions. But a good majority of them were! If only he could muster up the energy ask them…

The ribbon around their wrists shone brightly and warmed with a chant from the blonde woman. “It’s ready. He just has to chant with you and, well,” she glanced down at Akihito, “stay conscious.”

Almost as if on cue, the blur took hold of his sight again and his eyes glazed over…

The hand on his neck curled around his head and tapped his cheek, pulling him back momentarily.

“Mmh, yeah,” Malina yawned over her words, “good luck.” With that, she stood and padded back to a heap of fleeces.

“Right then, I’m tired too. Kowatashi, have the spell ready by the time we’ve finished the bond’s form.”

 _Bond?... Wait. **Bond?**_ Akihito’s head spun with more questions.

“Yes sir,” the glasses man extended his hands to the ribbon and let them hover, “Whenever you’re ready.”

When the golden stranger began chanting, he used Akihito’s name as a form starter. Then, along with a wave of anxiety, a name washed over him: Sin Ishida Akira. It was a type of mutual Nominator spell, the caster and the _by-part_ (other party involved in a spell but not the caster nor the victim of a harmful tribute) would fall to the effects. They shared the words flowing between them. Akihito visibly withered in relief, realizing he wasn’t being cursed or punished for saying his name to a stranger with magic. Once he relaxed, he truly listened to the chants. They were fluid and sturdy and coaxing in manners he had difficulty describing. Perhaps they were even comforting.

He opened his lips and let the words come out, their stanzas in unison. As he locked eyes with this Ishida, the light of the ribbon reflected immensely in his dark eyes with specks of amber. They were the things that struck him the most, even when red and violet light danced in streams about them and raced one by one to ribbon binding together.

Akihito was alive. He was full of energy and frivolity and anything of the like. His troubles were none, and the thing that grounded him was a soul of brown trees with gold leaves. The chanting became easier and louder, seeming to peak. The strips of red and violet pieced together between them and painted the ribbon.

The glasses man sealed it off with a spell of his own, finalizing whatever that was…

Akihito fell back on the man’s hand, all false energy revoked and exhaustion biting double-time.

Akira watched as the vibrant green eyes folded back and surrendered to sleep; He unconsciously burned the sight into his memory.

That night, the boy slept in close arms with a powerful mage. Literally. He slept in his arms.


	4. Enriched White

When Akihito woke up again, the pain in his throat was gone but was replaced with a terrible itching sensation. Knowing others were about, he restrained from coughing with considerable effort on his part.

His memories of the night before were hazy and tinted with sickly exhaustion. But the strangers were very much real. If he could pass them by and get to the end of the cave…

He tried sitting up, but a large force held him down. An _arm?_ He blinked in the darkness and realized that darkness was the shroud of another man’s chest, and he was thoroughly nuzzled into it. He may have fumed red for a moment before looking up to see whose chest he was so happily one with.

As soon as that dark-skinned, impeccably lined jaw hit him, a name flooded into his cerebrum and stayed there, stuck in the molasses his brain now was: Sin Ishida Akira. To have a third party in your name would only mean one thing where he was from: you were royalty or of close nobility. But he wasn’t where he was from. He was in a strange land that didn’t harbor the same magic as he was used to seeing. Perhaps the same types, but the spells and their forms were completely foreign. As was the language. He took the time to listen to the Lord who’d enslaved him and the men around him. The women, he learned, didn’t have much to say and were perhaps coerced into not saying much at all. It was a savage, sexist land he was brought to; in which slavery was legalized through contracts subject to torturing into a signature.

Over the two years of his slavery, he found the languages he’d learned as a boy to have unfamiliar structures and have even found some to be lost completely. If he were to spell aloud _lost,_ it would go as follows: los’d. As in having lost something, the words _lose_ and _did_ were one. But when he snuck papers from his “master” telling of recent news, he found the same word twisted to a different form: _lost._ It wasn’t that word in particular, no. It was many: lov’d, care’d, jump’d, sear’d, fear’d, etcetera. And those were only the words he _found,_ changed at the end with _ed_. He learned how to speak these foreign language structures over time but could never get their spelling right.

No, he wasn’t easy to adapt to change and all things unfamiliar. So, when he woke up trapped under this Ishida-stranger’s arm, naturally, he schemed his escape. Of course, getting out from under the man’s hold was first priority.

He, with difficulty, pulled himself out from the man’s arm and gently squirmed himself out ever-so-slightly. When he sat up, something like a feeling of bareness sprung in the air about him. At first, he thought it was just the feeling of emerging from immense warmth and, admittedly, comfort. Then, he looked down.

He almost wanted to scream at the thought sleeping next to a man with hardly a stitch on. He was lucky to have his britches.

With somewhat of a furious stance, he looked to the resting man in the dim light of cloudy dawn seeping through cracks in the cave door. What _innocence_ that sleeping face portrayed. He couldn’t have been so angry at those gentle lashes and shapely lips and carved face and—

Where might he have been going with those thoughts? He shook his head and looked about the cave. Three other forms lie in heaps of fleeces, their breaths heaving them up and down. They were easily circumventable. But once he was out of there, it was a matter of not freezing the life out of himself. He gathered the top mound of fleece in his hand and charged a Transfer spell: a spell that would change the physical form of any material. He released it with a quiet hum, and the fleece tore to bits and flew toward him in a rouge light, covering his bare form in parts and pieces perfectly sutured into clothing.

A questioning sound came from beside him, but he was already up and running toward the cave door. He leaped over a particularly large lump of fleece and dismantled the transfer spell holding the door together with a low note and disarming word-roots. Then, he was free into the bitter morning. Boots of furs and leather running fresh on the snow and past bare, sleeping trees. He recollected the night prior. The lord, the blizzard, the thieves, and the lord’s bone-chilling scream; finally, the conniving thieves’ scent and shrills as they burned at touch of his voice. The gruesome sentencing laid upon the savages by him did bring about some remorse. But it was mostly anger. Anger that those many lives were wasted at their own wrongful doings. _They_ were their own demise, not him. But of course, he couldn’t think that way. He killed hundreds last night. He was flooded with emotions, and those emotions kept his tired, worn, feverish, body on the move.

When he heard a warning yell from behind, beckoning for him to come back, he knew it was close and that his captors would soon catch up. But he had an ace up his sleeve, and she was almost as close.

He called to her, he heard her, he could _feel_ her near. For so long, he implored her to keep away in fear of others finding her and seeing her rare, valuable presence. But now he called to her in full and watched as her form soon darkened on the snowy horizon yet.

A lynx cross with an ocelot, a lioness, and a leopard, multiply its size by a by the tens, splash it with white and blue, and you have an elemental spirit known to dwell before the dawn of man and live to see their many ages and generations. And she was sworn to him.

Akihito knew the pursuers saw her, and he knew they’d strike her as soon as she was within range.

“Stop!” It wasn’t the stranger’s voice, “You’ll die by tomorrow!”

He dared to look back. A man much larger than Ishida, with blonde tips trimmed to a short stand and a light cloth shirt and standard leather pants ran after his tracks in the snow. A man of his physique and stature chasing him in the morning with hardly any light under a cloudy sky was nothing short of terrifying. Then, a man running up to his side with slick hair and glasses formed a Projectile spell, and he knew, he just _knew_ it wasn’t aimed at him. He had to act fast. If they hurt her, he might have had to _kill them._

He conjured what he had time to with a verse under his breath in hand to a Dispersal spell, and jumped in front of the smaller man’s projected gathering. He had to run far to the side and jump for it while spinning midair. So, by the time it hit him, the Dispersal spell was hardly adrift, and he felt the knockback; two opposing powers clashed in a sea of green and red. It stopped him dead in his tracks. With a grunt, he sat up and looked to the oncoming pursuers. Needless to say, even as they ran toward him, they were shocked. He only froze when he saw the third man running after him just paces behind the other two. He was so mesmerizing when he ran. Was that weird? Was he still in a sick daze? But _god_ those arms. In the dim light, he couldn’t really appreciate it even when it held him firm. At that moment, the eyes of that gaze were what held him to the snow. He couldn’t look away or even hardly move. What sort of magic was this?

He broke from his trance only when she jumped in front of him, blocking his view with all her icy white and blue glory. Having leaped over him and raced to the three men, she was out of his range. Knowing her intentions were to eliminate the threat, he had his qualms about killing them just yet, and, if they fired again—

“Calvary!” He called to her from ten paces, and she skidded in the snow and turned back to his voice in a scurry, her large paws wreaking havoc in the icy powder. He stood in record time and made to run to her, only to fall back in the snow with a crash, his dizzy mind serving to finally weigh him down. When she finally reached him, she tried to gather him up with her large, blunt muzzle, to no avail. Akihito grabbed onto her fur and stood again, putting his weight on her. Just as he was on his feet, she leaped to the side and took him with her—

He faceplanted in the snow. Just feet away, a deafening boom sounded in a cloud of green, and a young tree cracked, splintered, and surrendered to its gravitational masters on the cold, snowy floor. Calvary just barely dodged Death herself; even though it went without saying, he had to get her out of there.

He scrambled back up and willed his legs to stay standing as he reached for Calvary. She could get them _both_ out of there.

“Get back!”

“Kid! Get away from it!”

It was the large, terrifying man and the one with the glasses and green projectiles. Ishida was just behind them. They were trying to kill her… Because she was a threat to Akihito? Not for the furs, or her power-heart, or space contorting abilities, but because she was a threat to _him?_

He didn’t buy it for a second. He grabbed her fur and gave his all into a hop. She crouched just in time and helped hoist him on her back with a boost she jumped back on her fours making for a clean mount, despite their rough start-up. She was much larger than the Akihito; she could cover his chest with her front paw, doubled his height with her length, tripled his width with her own, and stood tantamount to one and a half Akihito’s height. She truly was an intimidating beast. And Akihito sat proudly upon her shoulder blades. The three men stopped in their tracks, and Akihito pondered whether he should high-tail it or stay and reason; he did steal high-quality fleeces, after all; they could brand him a thief.

The men just stared at each other for a long moment before Akihito spoke first.

“You’d dare to kidnap a stranger? Tell me, do you hold me captive?” His voice was rough and cracking lightly between phrases, but he didn’t stutter.

“And you’d dare to speak to a lord in such a manner?”

“I’ll handle this, Kowatashi.” Ishida hushed the man in glasses and put his hand on his arm, still aimed green for Calvary and Akihito.

“Some lord,” Akihito spat, “To sleep on the filth of a cave floor. You could have fooled me, great and powerful lord.”

The “lord” grinned at his retort while the bookworm-type man glowed green at the eyes. The giant-blooded man to their left remained indifferent but certainly ready to strike at his lord’s command, despite the large, carnivorous cat drooling at the scent of her enemies’ flesh.

“And what would that make you?” The Ishida man called, stepping out from the other two. “One who mounts a long-extinct beast and wields fire with his voice; who are you for us to assume? Or,” he pulled a ribbon of red and purple from his pants pocket, “we could make this easier, and you could tell us yourself.”

Akihito’s eyes widened, and his abused throat went dry. That was a bonding ribbon wearing his colors… And another’s. His mind raced. Calvary growled. Glasses man’s hand glowed green in perfect formation circles spinning around it. And, the hazy memories of the night prior flooded to him in a surge.

He blurted, “You bonded me!”

“Not against your will,” came the clean, easy response that only served to anger Akihito even further.

“I was ill! I hadn’t a clue what you were—

“You would have bled, frozen in the snow, surrounded by charred, rotting corpses. We took you into the mountains and kept you warm. In the night, you would have struck us down in your sleep with your unformed magic gatherings had I not bonded you to me.” His voice was harsh and unforgiving of any accusation thrown his way.

Akihito cursed and spoke low, “See, whe’re their basest mettle be not mov’d; they vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.”

Ishida raised a brow.

“He’s saying your intents were rude and selfish no matter the circumstance,” Kowatashi didn’t seem pleased as translated.

“Ah,” Ishida was only amused. “You’re right. I should have let you kill us all. I should have left your temperature to rise and left you starved on the cave floor. Or, better yet, I should have left you in the snow.”

Conflict flashed on Akihito’s face. He narrowed his eyes and dipped his chin. “Why take in me in the first place?”

Ishida’s bitter smile warmed some and, swear to the lords, Akihito’s newest shade of red was simply because of his anger, nothing more. “To let a fellow mage die in the snow after you single-handedly defeated all of your foes, who would I be not to take you in? I simply bonded you in an act of pure temperance of unnecessary harm. There’s no crime done this way.”

Simple and innocent. Just like that, he managed to crash all the argument on Akihito’s side. Nothing to it. “So, you admit then,” Akihito puffed his chest, “that bonding someone in a state of dubious lucidity and they _weren’t a threat,_ ” he narrowed his eyes once more, searching the other’s reaction, “would be an act of wrongful mistreatment?”

Ishida placed his hands in his pockets, and Calvary flared up, bristling beneath him. He clicked his tongue a few times to calm her. “I suppose it would be, yes. I’ll admit that _under harmless circumstances,_ and if there was no _formidable threat,_ ” Akihito wanted to gag, “then, bonding someone to me would be wrong, if I were to consult my inner morals.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and held it out, “But, under last night’s circumstances, well, let’s just say my hands were tied.”

Akihito glared as he realized which hand he held aloft: _that_ hand used to bond him when he could barely sit up. The man’s smile turned sinister, “Very funny,” Akihito deadpanned. He tapped his heal on Calvary’s side, and she crept closer to the three men in a controlled, slow pace. Seeing as showing any sort of _threat_ would land him in another heap of trouble in which he had no say, he spoke in a kind of friendly but strong, diplomatic voice, “So, you’ve bonded me to yourself,” glasses man took aim again, but Akihito wasn’t deterred, “which means I can’t be apart from you for long, otherwise it would take a toll on my magic.” Calvary crept closer still, “And you can smother a spell of mine at any time. And, the bulk of these effects last for at least two months?”

Ishida’s smile never wavered, “Just about, I’d say.”

“Then,” Calvary stopped two paces away from Ishida’s face, her icy breath in visible heaps. Minuscule ice crystals formed on his light nightshirt, “it’s only natural you provide for me for the duration of those two months. Seeing as a bond originated from two strong mages would have strong magical defects,” he shrugged, “I’m in your hands.”

Shadows cast darkly across the face of the glasses man, “You spoiled brat! As if Lord Ishida would ever yield to you.”

“Kowatashi,” Ishida’s voice was stern again, “get breakfast ready.”

Akihito’s brows went up at the blatant display of distaste toward someone clearly loyal. But the man closed his eyes and took a breath, “Of course, my lord,” he muttered and turned on his heels, powering down whatever offensive magic he held.

He took a moment to ponder at the frozen product of the large feline’s breath, then Ishida addressed Akihito, full-on, warming eye contact, “I have no intention of ailing you or forcing you into more long-term contracts. And, seeing as you can’t legally leave my side or question my authority, I’m going to ask you to kindly join us for breakfast.”

Akihito just stared in shock for a brief moment. “What do you mean?”

“Hm?” That cunning smile again, “You didn’t think we could leave your legal papers, did you?”

Akihito swallowed, “You possess my papers?”

“But of course. As I said. We couldn’t leave you to rot. Saving you would include _not_ taking you back to the surēbu reform camps, wouldn’t you agree?”

The younger man knit his brow and clenched his teeth. They had his papers. What could they have done with them? Did he alter them, so he was once again enslaved? “So, currently, I’m in your name? As in,” he swallowed a biting, terrible feeling of resentment, “you own me?”

Ishida toned down abrasive demeanor and answered, “Yes, that’s correct.”

Akihito softly hissed between his teeth and Calvary growled and dug her paws in the snow. To be someone else’s property was simply sickening. He’d been for two years, staying loyal to a contract he was forced to sign. Yes, it would have been for five had those thieves not interjected. But he’d learned, learned he was more than allowed to use his magic in this new world. He promised himself he’d never let it happen again and yet—

“Do you have the purchase papers from my previous lord? Or,” his mouth salivated at this opening, “did you forge them?”

Ishida’s never-wavering smile wasn’t sick or condescending this time, it was as if he lost a friendly game, “Of course, they’re forged.”

“Then I would legally have full ownership to them then?”

“You would,” he nodded that time. A surprisingly open and friendly gesture. “Now, would you please join us for breakfast?” Akihito narrowed his eyes and didn’t budge, “You have my word that giving you full access to your documents is the first priority as of this morning.”

But Akihito only tilted his head, “Documents?” He asked, “In means to the date?”

Ishida’s smile widened, and he shook his head lightly, “Were you raised by your Great, Great. Great, grandfather, boy?”

Akihito glared and hopped down from Calvary keeping his hand on her side (mostly for warmth and balance) as he walked her past the two men. The second one, the much larger and intimidating one, managed to successfully make himself nearly invisible for their conversation; he became an object in the snow, protective of the other being, and stagnant in terms of expression.

It was an awkward walk back to say in the least, but he was rather proud of how far he’d made it. Only when his throat itched once more and a cough forced its way to his breath did he seek refuge in his elbow. For a good miserable moment, he walked and his lungs hollered between hastened breaths. Calvary grumbled in concern and he tugged her fur. When the fit diminished, he looked to his furred sleeve. Ishida didn’t mention the fleeces he stole when he planned to split.

He sucked in a breath and honed to take in a bit of his pride as well, “How much?”

Ishida sounded behind him without missing a beat, “Pardon?”

“The furs,” Akihito spelled out, “how much for the furs?”

But the man only chuckled. “They’re free of charge.”

“What?”

“I am to provide for you, remember?” Akihito flushed. It felt like an attack when _he_ said it. The rest of the walk was otherwise silent, save for when they reached the cave.

“Does the lion thing need to come in with you?” It was the first show of discomfort on the Lord's behalf.

And it was Akihito’s turn to offer a confident smile; his eyes facetious and challenging, his lips curling in a heated side-smile, “Well of course. She’s with me. And you took the liberty of bonding yourself to me. Therefore, she’s with _you._ ” He laughed, “And not directly, of course. She still _solely_ favors me.”

As Akihito turned and started for the cave, the blue and white cat creature at his side with contact, Ishida stared a dark pool of his own challenge onto Akihito’s back; a hunter’s game, in which both prey and predator hold a different but significant gain. It was only when his trusted guard broke his line of thoughts with a chilled cough did he follow.

But the game still held its place high in his conscious, and it was the boy to blame.


	5. Foregoing the Past

Akihito walked into the cave door, perhaps feeling some remorse for the Transfer spells that someone took the time to organize into a revolving door just destroyed at his hand in a single swipe. He didn’t have much time to ponder his unspoken apologies, however, because _another_ hostile stranger was already taking aim, their yellow magic formations taking light in the spacious cave.

He jumped in front of her and began powering up another Dispersal. “Watch where you point that!” He cried and readied the spell of his own.

The girl behind the Projectile spell just stared unmoving at the both of them, her spells still forming, like she was expecting something brash from either of them. “What the hell is that thing?” Her voice was demanding, yet her heavy breaths shredded her words further as if she’d just now woken up and put her guard up in a start.

Akihito canceled his spell and put his hand on Calvary’s nose and his other hand out to the young girl, his voice weary and non-threatening. “She’s a friend,” he tried, “she’d never hurt you.”

The girl, wide-eyed, sneered and leveled her voice, “Well, she looks like she could take your hand off in one bite.” It was more of a curious observation that time.

“Ah,” Akihito stammered, “Well, I suppose she could, but she won’t do that. So, we can all _not_ kill each other on a whim? Because that seems to be becoming a theme here.”

“Malina, lower your arms. The cat won’t hurt you.” And she did, after a while, only when Ishida instructed her to do so. She still stared at Calvary; her eyes ponderous.

“Malina, why don’t you come help me with breakfast?” Kowatashi’s voice was flat and disheartening.

The blonde scoffed, “Because I never learned to cook?”

“An idiot could do it. Just come over here, would you?”

Akihito stared at the young girl. Was there some sort of spell on her? Was she still casting one? There was an indefinite aura of magic about her, and he didn’t know why.

The girl noticed his staring and frowned. “What? You’ve never seen a girl who can’t _cook_ before?” It was almost as if she accused him of something. “Or maybe you’ve never seen a girl cast magic without being told.” Akihito still stared, puzzled. “Oh, sorry,” her voice was snarky and _very_ unapologetic, “am I offending you by starting a conversation.” Akihito began to notice how the rest of the cave tenants were staring at them too, watching the encounter.

Akihito shook off the strange feeling he had about her and lightly shrugged, “I never learned either. To cook, I mean.” He held out his hand, “I’m Montekyiu Akihito.”

“Hmph,” she tilted her chin to him, “so you _can_ speak like a normal person.” Akihito didn’t respond. She sighed and took his hand. “I’m Kĩĩnai Malina.”

Akihito’s shoulders sagged and he gestured to the larger cat that seemed about ready to take her _head_ off in one bite. “This is Calvary. She’s an elemental beast, a descendant of Leo.”

The cave looked at him like he was crazy, except Ishida. He just found parchment from a pack and absorbed himself in its text.

“Elemental beasts went extinct thousands of years ago. You can’t be serious.”

Akihito drew a blank on this. They were _extinct?_ Not endangered or exiled to another land? Calvary was really the last? “I rescued her from poachers when I was young,” he said after a pause.

She smiled like she’d just won some game they were evidently playing. “You’re lying.”

“Malina,” Ishida didn’t look up from the papers, “that’s enough for now. Go help with breakfast.”

“I will, I will,” she assured, “just a minute.” She walked up slowly to the large blue and ivory beast and looked her square in the golden eyes. She glanced at Akihito for a moment before hesitantly holding her hand out to the cat’s muzzle.

“She doesn’t usually take to lots of strangers, but she likes women. Just don’t make too many sudden movements.” Akihito explained.

“Her breath is freezing,” Malina gasped at the surprising chill creeping up her palm.

“Yes. She’s a water element, she can freeze and thaw anything in her focus.”

“Incredible,” she whispered as Calvary looked back at her with her cool gaze. Calvary blinked once at Malina’s hand, blinked twice, then leaned forward and snuffed her hand with the front of her nose and mouth, covering Malina’s hand entirely. The girl flinched and waited, but Calvary was simply content on nuzzling her wrist, covering it with chilly saliva.

Akihito laughed, “She’ll mark anyone who’ll pet her. It’s gross, really.”

Malina’s trepidatious hand managed to move to the cat’s large, circular ears. She laughed, “That _is_ gross,” But she continued to pet her, even when Calvary’s large mass started to weigh against her, leaning and preening for the attention.

“Just tell her ‘no’ when she starts to paw or claw at you.” He would’ve stayed to keep an eye on her, but he had a more important matter gnawing at his mind. With a last glance behind him, he put his trust in Calvary not to _eat_ her and moved further into the well-lit cave. He strode toward Ishida, keeping a watchful side-eye on Malina and Calvary as they got more acquainted. Kowatashi didn’t seem pleased, but Akihito was beginning to think that that was simply the nature of how he looked. The other man, the larger one, stood, organizing different sorts of crystals. He had this stoic expression on his face, like he didn’t care about anything other than the crystals; but Akihito could see that he was an observer, more of a listener than a talker. Akihito stopped on the side of the table Ishida sat at. Something in the back of his mind might have pondered at how they brought a decorated, oil-base, wooden table on their travels (since they were clearly a nomadic bunch) but he pushed the thought aside, he had more pressing matters to worry about. He softly cleared his stuffy throat. “You saw, didn’t you?”

Ishida didn’t look up, “Saw what?”

Akihito swallowed, it went down rough and painful, “The fire.”

This time, Ishida made eye contact, “I did.”

Akihito nodded and looked down at the table, it’s carved, swirly edges smooth under his fingers as he traced them. “You’re not going to sell me? Or slaughter me because I’m bad luck?”

Ishida gave him a hard stare, “I have no use for money right now.”

Akihito scoffed, “So you’re not going to try to sell me because you don’t need money. Not because you don’t indulge yourself in human trafficking.”

“I do indulge myself in human trafficking,” Akihito looked up and froze, his blood ice. Ishida gestured to Malina, still playing with at stroking Calvary’s fur, “I bought her five years ago at the Central Floggensai surēbu market. Two months later, I was able to attain documents and a status crest to grant her citizenship to Malliumfoss.” Akihito visibly relaxed, Ishida smiled teasingly. “Was there something you wanted to ask me?”

Akihito stood tall and held out his hand expectantly. “My legal papers. They belong to me.”

The raven-haired man reached to the side of him and placed his hand on the top of a stack of parchment. His thumb brushed the stack and lifted the papers at the middle. He handed Akihito one paper, then a stack. Akihito looked at the first paper. “Only one of these are mine. Where are the rest?”

Ishida shook his head, “There was only one contact-purchase paper. We found nothing else of yours. You may have burned it, perhaps?”

Akihito looked at the other stack of papers. “What are these? They’re blank.”

“They’re forgery stencils for registration and citizenship papers. They already have the Union’s stamps, so all you need to do is fill them in. We’ll need to get you a crest however.” Akihito just stared at the one paper, his brow furrowed and his eyes stern. “Do you need help reading them? Or with typing the information?” Akihito’s focused gaze jolted abruptly. Did he need help? It was strange to see the man solicitous in any way when his original impression was anything but.

Then it clicked, “Oh! Oh… No, I can read them just fine. It’s just…” He trailed off.

“Just what?” Ishida’s tone turned from supporting to smugly condescending in a beat.

But Akihito didn’t have the heart to match him with attitude right then. “One paper could dictate one person’s life? One contract and purchase stamp with a _slave’s_ description?” His eyes weakened. “Is this all that’s legal or needed for a human being to become property?”

Ishida sighed. He leaned back in the wooden chair and folded his arms across his chest, “What kingdom are you from, boy?” At this, Akihito fell silent. When he didn’t answer, Ishida nodded thoughtfully. He watched as Malina put a now gloved hand in front of the cat’s muzzle and stared in amazement as the ice crystals formed on the thick leather. He talked in a way that soothed and assured, but stood to make a vital point. “You scorch an entire band of thieves, at least a few hundred in size, with a spell presumably summoned with your voice, you nearly blast us to shreds in your sleep, and then seek refuge in an elemental beast that hasn’t been known to man since eight thousand years in the past. Now, that very beast is in the same cave we camp in, you haven’t any papers to set you a legally free man, and you’re stuck with us for two to three months.” Akihito kept his head down, feeling as if he was somehow being accused of something. “The truth,” he drawled, “is bound to come out eventually,” he sensed the boy’s uneasiness, “Akihito.”

He blinked at the man. His first name? Ishida knew him for less than a fortnight (or a day for that matter), and he used his first name? Sure, they were bonded, but by complicated circumstances, not friendly and certainly not informal. Did Ishida stand to disrespect or taunt him? “Montekyiu.”

Ishida tilted his head innocently. “Hm?”

“That’s Montekyiu to you, Sin Ishida.” The glasses man snapped his head from a pot over a fire and chopped mushrooms to glare infuriated daggers in Akihito’s peripheral vision. He ignored him.

“Ah. Yes, well, your papers only say your first name. There’s no way I could possibly know your final name.”

Akihito held up his wrist. “You bonded me. That requires a form of Nominator spell. You _must_ know my name.”

Ishida chuckled, having been caught and smiled in the face of defeat. “Guilty, Fa Montekyiu.” Akihito’s heart skipped a beat. His third name. Of _course,_ he knew his full name. The bond wouldn’t work without it. The only other thing bothering him was that he didn’t remember saying it. Hell, he hardly remembered the whole bonding ordeal at all. And, if Ishida were to just say his first name in front of others, they would think him still a salve. Ishida seemingly read his thoughts, “I hope you recall what I said about the truth being—”

“Akihito’s fine!” He bit it out in a sharp whisper.

Ishida’s smile broadened. “What was that?”

Akihito took in a much-needed breath and looked the man square in the eye, “Akihito's fine, Akira.” The grim-faced man behind him tending to the pot might as well have lit into flames with anger (if the deadly stare was anything to go by). Akihito did flush at the sudden intimateness but held his stare nonetheless, even when Akira’s grin turned pure sinister; and Akihito began to ponder at how the man managed to look so _sultry_ when he was being so patronizing. The boy glared and cleared his scratchy throat, resisting a cough, “Are there any more requirements or texts I should know about?” It was an empty question at that point (or a momentary escape).

“Not that I know of. Everything’s right there,” Akira’s smile was relentless as he input an empty answer. Was Akihito transparent or something? “Would you like an ink and quill?”

“No,” Akihito shook off his flustered feeling, with difficulty seeing as a teasing, piercing grin was aimed directly at his crimson face. He placed a hand on his tattooed neck, “I have all the ink I need.” Akira was a bit taken aback at this. He couldn’t have meant it literally. Could he?

Sure enough, he started to hum, and magic flowed from his palms, his lips, and from around his neck. He had the cave’s attention, even Calvary perked her head upright and flitted her tail from side to side in obvious interest. His magic gathering was quite impressive, to say the least. Streams of red fluttered from him and about the cave. It outshone the candles and heat crystals and, eventually, the fire that Kowastashi was working over. Once he felt it adequate enough, he opened his mouth and sang outright.

It was an old hymn that was used to sing children to sleep, a silly song that everyone knew the first few stanzas of. It talked of a dragon flying from the hateful townsman, being outcasted, only to come back and scorch the village they thrived in with the same fire on the torches they threw at him. Akihito sang past those few first stanzas that were hazy common knowledge and on to unfamiliar ones, new and added to that silly song they thought they knew. He sang of the dragon using the metal in the pitchforks they chucked at his scales to embroider his teeth, and shred the brick walls of houses. And, finally, he sang of the hateful words cast at the dragon used to anger Neptune himself, and strike the village to bits.

At first, the other four looked at him as if really might’ve had some nails loose. But as the song went on, and the papers picked up the air and floated in front of the boy on their own violation, the cave watched in awe, and listened with entrancement. They watched as the dark substance staining his neck from deep under the skin slowly washed off and gathered onto the papers’ faces. Next was the ink from his contract. The contract that he was physically beaten into signing at the reform camp. Soon, all the ink from his neck and all the ink that bound him a slave had settled on to the papers in front of him.

As he finished the song with the spiteful village being reduced to rubble, the papers settled neatly in a stack on the desk.

Akira picked them up. “You lied about your age?”

Akihito shook his head. “The contract did. It was because Lord Nuka wanted to have the benefits of owning a longtime slave for ten years. But since the legal age of slavery is fifteen, and I was twenty-one at the time, he lied about my age and the date he purchased me.” He laughed bitterly as he reminisced. “The bastard had me for two years. Do I look like I’m twenty-seven?” A rhetorical question. Yet, Akira answered.

“No,” he raised a brow at Akihito, “you look like you’re seventeen.”

“What?” Akihito laughed nervously this time. “You don’t mean that. Do you?” When Akira didn’t answer, Akihito gave him a strange look. “You truly thought I was seventeen?”

“At most.” Akihito searched his brain for things to say to that. “But now that I know you’re not,” he paused and gave a soft laugh, leaning forward and resting his arms on the table, “I don’t have any more _morals_ getting in the way of… Curious proceedings.”

“Morals?” Akihito back-tracked. “ _Proceedings_?”

Akira’s grin was back in full stride, and his eyes seemingly _undressed_ Akihito without guilt. Akihito didn’t have the chance to ask, however, because Kowatashi cleared his throat behind him and presented two plates. Akira stood, grabbed his plate, and retired to a cavity in the cave closed off by a stone door, opened with a simple Aspiration spell, leaving Akihito to wonder what the hell that was about.

The man in glasses all but slammed the plate onto the table before he could reach for it. Luckily, the man’s bitter attitude wasn’t contagious. In fact, Akihito was giddy with the fact that soon, he’d be free man, legally (sort of). He looked down at the forged papers and couldn’t help but let the smile curl ever-so-slightly on his lips


	6. Heading The Pedals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 6am (I haven't slept) and I've just decided to update every other Sunday (Gods have grace). Imma go eat breakfast now, I guess.

Malina didn’t end up helping with breakfast. Instead, she took her plate and sat down with Calvary curled around her and fed her the scraps and crusts and gristle of the bread and brisket. Akihito took the seat Akira vacated and stared down at his plate. A large brisket, almost the size of his head sat in the middle of it, and a bowl of mushroom and chive soup sat on the side. Akihito was never a meat-eater. He couldn’t remember the last time he had it; despite his feline companion, who could take down an entire cow without a second thought. Hunger roared through his lithe frame, and he started for the soup. Truly, he did his best to eat like he wasn’t an unfed scoundrel, but he ended up scarfing down the food with little remorse. The least he could do was eat it quietly as he all but lapped the broth off his spoon (also left on the table). He left the meat untouched and was apt to give it to Calvary when the uptight chef wasn’t looking. He was going to live with them for two months, they’d find out about his herbivorous tendencies sooner or later; but for now, he’d do his best to stay on Four Eye’s good side.

He was the first finished. As far as he knew, that was, seeing how Akira seemed to huddle himself up in a makeshift room. He placed the plate on the floor with the man’s back turned, and Calvary abandoned Malina’s kindness in scraps for a much more generous offering.

That aside, he lifted his newly “printed” papers. He looked them over, hoping there was no spelling or grammatical errors. He hadn’t gotten ahold of much printed text from this world, but as far as he knew, the words seemed to match up. The stencils were pretty straight forward, they had categories and unanswered labels (before he filled them in) like _Date of Birth_ and _Ethnic Background, Physical Description, Previous Occupation(s), Current Occupation(s),_ etcetera. He fibbed a touch on the occupations bit. According to the papers, he was born on a farm on the outskirts of Malliumfoss and was raised there until he was seventeen and brought to an apprenticeship program in the capital for his magic and casting education.

He clasped the sides of the papers and tapped the bottom of the stack to the table, straitening the stack. It was then he put effort into wondering how they managed to pull a clearly well-maintained and expensive piece of furniture with them. It was a part of the cave perhaps? Set up for the lord’s travel? He looked around the cave. The center of it was set up into a lounge with a two-piece sofa set around the fire. The cave floor held a large amount of space and was presumably well hidden from the outside world (Akihito didn’t get a good look). Aside from the sofas and table, there were two large pots and an island counter with a griddle that Kowatashi had used to work on for breakfast. At that point, he was sure the larger items were there already. There wasn’t any other explanation for it. That, and they had cleaned and polished them when they arrived. That was why they looked so clean compared to the dusty temperance that held itself naturally within the cave. That must have been it—

“Nishigaki, do you know when the beds are arriving? I don’t want the lord sleeping on the floor another night.”

Huh?

“Yes.” Nishigaki looked up from the crystals to hand Kowatashi his plate. Akihito hadn’t even seen him eat… “They’re supposed to arrive early this morning.”

“How early?”

“Well,” Nishigaki’s eyes flitted over to Akihito, “we timed and requested them to arrive when the master woke up, but it seems he was up earlier than we anticipated.” Akihito wasn't lost on that blatant suggestion. He narrowed his eyes and sat back in the chair, folding his arms. Calvary chose that moment to materialized at his side, evidently licking her lips with a scent of beef in her breath and nudging his arm while hovering over his head protectively, possessively.

Akihito reached up and scratched her snowy white neck and spoke out. “By arrive, do you mean deliver’d?”

There was a pause. “No, nobody else knows our location.”

Akihito inclined his head and looked at the large man that answered. “Then, how do you suppose you’ll get the beds?”

Kowatashi and Nishigaki shared a look. “With a Transportation spell, of course.”

The large, blonde-tinted man didn’t beat around the bush, yet Akihito remained in obvious confusion. “Transportation? Don’t you mean Steller Teleportation?”

Kowatashi answered this time. “No, Transportation spells aren’t star-based.” He didn’t miss a beat.

Akihito stood and left the papers in a neat pile. He walked over to the two men. “Will you show me?” Calvary became his large, feline-shaped, protective shadow.

“I could show you.” Malina walked up from behind Calvary, rubbing her palm on her fur as she walked by.

“Malina—” 

“Re-lax,” she dragged the word, “I won’t pull out anything threatening or abuse the power or whatever it is that you nerds think I do in my spare time.” Successfully silencing the man in glasses, she grabbed Akihito by the arm and led him to a cave wall stacked with four packs lined up against the rock. Calvary trotted along behind. Malina picked up a plain leather pack and held it up for Akihito to see. “It looks rather void to me,” Akihito gave a skeptical, disheartening look.

“Whatever that means,” she dismissed it and opened the pack, dipping her hand in halfway. “Think of any hand-held item. It can be food, clothing, knick-knacks, _knives…_ ”

“Malina,” Kowatashi warned numbly while clearing the table of Akihito’s plate (he placed it back before he got up).

“What? It wouldn’t be _my_ fault if _he_ requested it,” she looked at Akihito excitedly, “think of something crazy and fun. Literally anything…”

Her eyes sparkled with anticipation, and he could hardly refuse her (as bizarre as the whole ordeal was), so he thought. _Something crazy and fun._ It took him a minute, but he supposed he came up with something crazy enough to spike her interest. “Well, there is this _one_ thing that…” But then promptly decided against it, deeming a bit over the top. “No, never mind. It’s not too interesting.”

Malina nearly exploded. “You’re lying!” She was practically vibrating with energy, “I know you’re lying.”

Akihito eyed her suspiciously. Sure, the _thing_ was interesting in its natural aspects. But to just present it to a young girl could be sinful if looked upon by strong opinion. “How old are you?”

“What?” Malina seemed determined to find out what fascinating thing Akihito had in mind. “I’m eighteen,” she blurted. “Why? What’s the thing?”

Akihito shrugged hesitantly at first but eventually relented. “Is there any way you could pull out a,” he bit his lip, already second-guessing himself, “Rough Numos Flower?”

Malina sagged. “A Rough. Numos. Flower.” Her disappointment was evident. “Never heard of it.”

A part of Akihito wilted with a touch of relief. “So, you can’t get one?”

“Well,” she shrugged with resolve and ruffled her hand in the bag, “I never said that…” And to Akihito’s amazement (and admittedly horror), she pulled out a pink, swirly, exotic flower that could easily occupy her entire palm. She grasped it by the short stem at its base. “Oh,” she observed, “it’s lovely, I suppose.” She sniffed. “It has a strong scent,” she brought her hand closer to her nose to get a good whiff—

Akihito grabbed her wrist abruptly. Her eyes darted to his wide, almost animated ones. He slowly shook his head while looking her dead in the eye. This left Malina to come to all sorts of conclusions about this exotic flower with a peculiar smell that was labeled crazy, fun, and interesting by this person shaking their head “no” with thousands of warnings in one single look. She leaned her head in toward the flower and sniffed as fast and as deep as she could before Akihito could stop her.

His eyebrows flew up as her grey-blue eyes rolled back. He yanked the flower away. With a fresh flower like this, the dose of a single breath _that close_ could only mean an intense, instant trip. He had done it now. Barely knew this girl for an hour, and he had her smelling hallucinogenic flowers like she was a garden nymph in spring. He stepped back, and his hands flew to his head in a panic. She wasn’t panicking. She just stared at him like he was the most amazing, incredible creature on the planet; or maybe she was looking at Calvary hovering behind him.

“That’s!” She blurted, “Interest-ing,” her sentence broke off into a giggle.

Akihito’s hands were on his mouth now, the flower dropped to the cave floor amidst the momentary chaos.

“ _What’s_ interesting?” He was so done for. The moment the up-tight man squared his shoulders and stridden over to their wall, Akihito’s heart sank. Maybe it was two years of habit; watch your tongue or you’ll earn a beating, watch what you eat or you’re a slave-thief, watch every little action you do—if you act the slightest out-of-place, you’ll surely be _put_ in your place. Act like property. That was his world for the past two years. They wouldn’t revoke his newly seated papers for _this,_ would they?

Suddenly, Malina stood up as fast as she could and met Kowatashi as soon as he reached them with a jump in his way. She reached out with her arms and grabbed his face. “Kowatashi?” Her voice was theatrical. “You’re wearing the Diamond Crystals of Ever-seeing!” She plucked the glasses from Kowatashi’s stunned face and whispered loudly. “I must see the truth!”

Akihito cringed as she slid the glasses onto her own face. An intense trip _and_ seeing glasses that weren’t suited for good vision was quite the combination one wouldn’t usually entertain. “Wow!” She exclaimed. “The world shows its true form at last!” She leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, her eyes unseeing (or all-seeing as she would put it).

Kowatashi looked at her as if she’d sprouted two heads and snatched the glasses back. He looked to Akihito whose hands were covering his mouth and whose eyes were wide with guilt. He looked at the bright-pink flower abandoned on the floor. Then looked back to Malina muttering things about the great world’s truth. Akihito didn’t say anything. He just let the man draw his own conclusions and watched helplessly. Then, Kowatashi stepped in front of Akihito, reached down, and carefully picked up the flower. He gave one last grimacing look before turning and heading toward enclosed alcove wall-door that Akira had held himself up in.

Surely _now,_ Akihito was done for.

Kowatashi rapped three times on the hollow wall, and it reverberated throughout the cave. In a flash of dark purple, it opened, and Kowatashi stepped inside. Akihito couldn't see much from his position, but he could certainly imagine the conversation with growing bouts of dread.

He glanced down at the young girl again, she was off somewhere else; somewhere with pink clouds and gardens and happy mania. She seemed to be having a good one. Akihito was more than sure that if he took a whiff of said flower, he’d have the worst trip of his lifetime; pink monsters, purple shadows, and a face-to-face confrontation with the embodiment of anxiety itself.

Calvary must’ve sensed his dread because she nudged his shoulder and sniffed at his hair. He reached out and around Calvary’s head to scratch gently at her left jowl, and she rested her mighty chin against his left shoulder.

That’s right. If anything went wrong, he had Calvary now. She was a force to be reckoned with. And she wasn’t indefinitely bonded to a selfish, high-sighted lord with hardly any moral boundaries.

Nishigaki caught his eye. The large man leaning over the table of crystals with his hand pressed against it for balance and his other balled up and plastered to his lips. He was… quivering? In fear? No…

The bastard was laughing! At his expense!

Before he could spit some offense over to the formidably-sized man, Akira walked out of the cave-crevice, leaned against the rock frame, and folded his arms. His stance wafting power and demanding answers in a few simple motions.


	7. Indebted Nightingale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aye so, I put a TINY easter egg in this story... Oh, I'll just tell you. Akira Ishida is named after the Japanese voice actor of Gaara From Naruto. So, if you ever wanna find out why I keep describing Akira's voice as "sultry" and "dripping with risque," then look up the character and find out why I fell in love ;)

[Chapter 7]

Akihito didn’t fight it. He was already apt to shuffle nervously over even before Akira held out his finger and gestured at him, wiggling it twice. He put his palm on Calvary’s muzzle, and she planted herself down on the cave ground, sniffling curiously at his shoulder as he walked away. The cave was, of course, impressively spacious. But not as quite to give poor Akihito enough time to think of an excuse from one end of the cave from the other. And the more he thought about how to explain it, the less he wanted to tell the truth. _I_ ‘ _m_ s _orry I accidentally drugged your party member,_ he thought, _she asked me to do it._ He internally cringed at his own thoughts as he stopped two paces from the lord.

His slumped shoulders, dimmed eyes, and overall defeated form stood before a confident, relaxed, and more robust one. And, it may have been his imagination, but was there a ghost of a smile on his lips before Akira turned and the mood coerced him to follow?

Trepidation rattled him as the cave wall closed behind them, cutting them off from the menacing man in glasses, the laughing bodyguard, the tripping girl, and Calvary. He felt a tad vulnerable without his protective, purring shadow now that he’d just gotten used to having her around again; especially now. Akihito stopped in the middle of the alcove. It was much, much bigger once you walked in. He looked up—and his stomach dropped. Feet and feet above them were hundreds of heavy, sharp, and variously shaped stalactites, just teasing and preening on the paranoid mind.

He heard Akira chuckle. “Look closely,” his voice echoed and carried itself with ease throughout the cave, “there’s a dome. Nothing will fall on us.” Sure enough, when he squinted and stared for a moment, he noticed the water; each fang the cave threatened him with had slow-dripping droplets on each of its point. You never knew which one was going to fall next—onto a raised, transparent platform above them. He watched as multiple droplets silently landed and streamed down the spherical dome and to the sides of the cave, where a deep ditch bordered the cave floor. They were standing on a plateau surrounded by a deep moat that was as wide as his palm was long. You couldn’t see the bottom. The only exception to the dome’s slip of coverage was the entrance, the umbrella-like dome was perfectly sealed to the wall above it.

His anxiety (some of it anyway) turned to awe. “Impressive,” he admitted. He gestured to the spell carvings on the walls, projecting the dome’s spell. “Those will hold up nicely?”

Akira smirked, a teasing, confident sort of look; Akihito momentarily _melted._ “Yes. You won’t have to worry about it.” He turned to a stand with multiple shelves and an extending, table-like platform at its top.

Malina had just shown him that one can pull anything imaginable out of those curious bags. But something that size? Was there a limit?

The clinging of glass and the smooth _slosh_ of liquid interrupted his thoughts. “Would you like a drink?

Akihito studied him for just a moment. “You’re not angry.” It wasn’t a question; it was more of an observation.

“No,” Akira answered him. “I can imagine what went down. Milina’s always had a,” he thought as he poured a second glass of amber liquid from a clear, cube-shaped bottle, “ _curious_ disposition.”

Akihito visibly relaxed. “I would not mind a drink.” He walked steadily over to Akira (whom he’d just realized was almost an arm taller than him). Akira held the freshly-poured drink aloft but didn’t extend his arm to him. Akihito ended up walking too close for comfort, but didn’t have the nerve to back up as they clinked their tumblers together and tipped the clear, brown liquid back in unison. Maybe he’d come off as rude if he backed away from this… Intimate distance as they locked eyes and sipped their glasses? Maybe it was a challenge—

His eyes darted wide when the booze surrounded his tongue and flooded to the back of his throat. This was whiskey? It was _incredible._ Surprisingly smooth, instantly warming, and carried an unexplainable, pleasant burn. He swiftly gulped the rest down and held out the empty tumbler. “May I have another?” Akira just stared at him for a long moment, then outright _laughed._ Akihito, though it had only been a few beats, blamed the alcohol for the heat on his face and, and the coarse thoughts that crossed his mind at Akira’s display of a warm, easy manner. The thoughts turned up with things like Akira’s laugh somehow being _very attractive,_ and how he’d just _love_ to run his hands down that faultless skin on Akira’s neck. That’s right. It was purely the alcohol to blame.

“I’d let that settle,” he said finally and knocked back the rest of his own glass. He took Akihito's empty glass and set both their tumblers on the table-like, shelved stand with tens more bottles throughout it.

Defeated, Akihito took in the rest of the cave, and Akira walked past him. There was a large, square table with a chair on either side, a desk with rolls of parchment and stacks of bleached paper atop it, and heat crystals _everywhere._ There were two particularly large stalagmites that reached about seven feet from the otherwise smoothed cave floor. They were breathtaking, and they drew the eye simply because someone had taken the time to arrange hundreds, maybe thousands of heat crystals like a mosaic puzzle all up them. It truly stole all the attention for the rest of the rainbow colors of randomly-placed crystals on the walls, not that they weren’t anything to gawk at. The cave sparkled, glowed, and illuminated itself with artistic charisma.

“Like what you see?”

Akihito whirled on his heel to find Akira leaning casually against a whole _wardrobe._ He would’ve wondered how they managed to fit it through the entrance if he hadn’t been distracted by the very notion that Akira’s overshirt was _missing._ A thin, light, stretchy undershirt outlined impeccably sculptured, washboard abs; and the short-cut sleeves cradled dark-skinned biceps, thicker than his neck, crossed over _beautifully_ set pectorals. “To a taste.” He said as he secretly thanked Akira for not allowing him another sip of whatever sort of whiskey that was and his lips for not stuttering.

Akira’s smirk was sinister. “I meant the walls.”

Akihito cleared his throat awkwardly. “Wherein did you, um,” he coughed, fighting the new-found burn and the chronic itch that almost canceled each other out. He put his wrist over his mouth, purposefully cleared his throat this time, and tried again. “The wardrobe. How did you fit it through the door?”

Akira gave him a hard stare before answering. “The packs.”

“Well, yes.” Akihito couldn’t help but feel a little silly, “But surely, you could not pull _anything_ out of them, could you?”

Akira sighed. “No,” he answered, “not anything. The packs are magically intertwined to the Malliumfoss and Kernotch royal archives. There are hundreds of servants managing and stocking it around the clock. If it’s in stock, and most all things are, then you can conjure it through the packs.”

“Oh,” Akihito said numbly, that tasteful warmth turning to a pleasant lightening sensation. “You’re not really a lord, are you?”

Akira raised a brow. “Hmm,” he drawled, “you’re not really a slave, are you?”

Akihito fell silent, refusing to pry any further in fear of being cornered himself. His intentions obvious, and nearly ostentatious as such, he changed the subject. “Those packs are nice.”

The older man chuckled and shook his head. “Alright,” he gazed at Akihito, facetious questions in his eyes, “it’s eating at me. I have to know: why would you summon a Pink Swirl.”

Pink… Swirl? Was that some sort of saying in this world he hadn’t learned yet? “I’m sorry?”

“The flower, Swirls have been illegal in all the major kingdoms for a millennium. Why, of all things, would you conjure the most powerful hallucinogenic known to man?”

Akihito rocked guiltily on his heels for a moment as he thought of an innocent response. “Why was it in stock?” There was an awkward pause before Akira grinned wide and nodded.

“Those packs _are_ nice,” Akira said as he let the subject linger in the air. Akihito smiled back, he couldn’t hold it in; it just spread on his face and to the corners of his eyes like a bubbly, infectious disease. They shared a small moment; then, Akira’s brow furrowed, and he inclined his head like something had just crossed him. “Speaking of which…” He stood straight and walked to the opposite side of the wall, leaving Akihito to wonder at him. “Do you know if Shuai mentioned anything about the beds being ready for transportation?”

“Who?” Was he hearing things?

“Kowatashi. Did he say anything about the beds arriving?”

“Ah,” Akihito connected the dots. “Actually, I think he did. What a strange name.”

Akira chuckled. He was on the other side of the cave now, reaching for a magical pack of his own. “Don’t say that to his face, _Montekyiu._ ”

Akihito huffed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” After a second, he scrunched his face and cast a questioning gaze toward Akira. “Is my name strange?”

“Not entirely,” he shrugged, “but, and I have to ask, did you make for yourself?” He casually fiddled with the pack as Akihito felt glued in place, not making any unnecessary movements as the background dizziness persisted.

“No,” Akihito lightly shook his head, “I was birthed with it.”

Akira held fast on the pack and walked back, closer to Akihito. “All of it?” There was an _edge_ to his voice that made Akihito’s throat run instantly dry.

“Yes, all of it.”

Something in Akira’s eyes softened, and the cave seemed much brighter all of a sudden. “You know, I could use your help,” Akihito, needless to say, was very relieved Akira had dropped the subject. He had him sounding personal answers left and right. Perhaps the drink had loosened his tongue?

His shoulders sagged. “With what?”

“Nothing too vigorous. I just need you to cast a levitation spell. You mind standing over there?” He pointed, and Akihito managed (somehow) to walk over to the designated spot: right in the middle of the cave, the most open, barest space. “Just cast it once its mass starts to come through.”

“Right,” not that he was quite sure what that meant (or what he agreed to for that matter), but he figured he’d find out soon enough.

Akira held out the pack, and a glowing, white orb of neutral magic floated out, inches past the seams of the pack. Akihito was feet away and could easily deflect any amounts of projectiles should the orb decide to bare any, but his suspicion still piqued. What would the supposed lord with great magical power need someone to cast a simple levitation spell for? But thankfully, the orb didn’t project anything offensive. Instead, beige and light colors swirled from it in large amounts, clumping in colors and becoming more vibrant. It started to shape itself into a large, rectangular mass, dark brown at the base and white with the top half. By gods, it was a bed; an intricately embroidered, masterfully wood-worked, full-sized bed. And it was molding fast, paces above the ground. Akihito’s eyes raced to Akira’s, he nodded, and Akihito hurried to gather his magic. It was rushed and sloppy, but it was also very hard to fail at a levitation spell. His daft self had even surged the gathering under the evolving bed before even forming the spell type, but he caught it in time. He hummed his form to life and brought it down slowly by the frame.

It was well-placed, now that he looked around another time. It seemed to complete the extravagant cavern room. All of the different kinds of wood even blended with the colorful walls… The walls.

“Ugh—” Akihito clasped his head and grabbed the bedpost for balance, willing away the dancing and warping walls arounf him.

“Tired?” That baritone carried around by the cave rapped at his consciousness, like it had the night before.

“I guess so.” He winced as another wave of wooziness washed over him. Suddenly, Akira was at his side, urging him away.

“Come, sit.” There he went again. That oh-so-great-and-arrogant lord being courteous and attentive. It threw Akihito off. It was just so contradictory to his atmosphere and original impression.

“Thank you,” he said numbly after having been placed on the bedside by strong, careful hands. A nervous laugh slipped from his irritated throat. “I’m not usually so easily worn out,” he sucked in a small gasp as the crystal walls started spiraling. “Or this much of a lightweight.”

“I’m sure it’s just due to recent events,” Akira assured.

Kowatashi was desperately trying to get her to just _stand up._ She hardly budged from the wall and maintained to be all-too-interested in his eyeglasses; continuously reaching for his face in her pursuit of the “ultimate truth.” On top of that, Nishigaki was unequivocally no help.

He’d just about had it with his young party member and was apt to leave her drooling the wall when she snapped her head up and started giggling profusely. “Someone’s ly-ing,” she sing-songed behind stammering giggles, and Kowatashi could do nothing but scowl uselessly at her antics. The tripping truthward was left there on the crease of the cave.

“Perhaps it is,” Akihito yawned wide, exhaustion wracking him.

“Let me take your jacket.” Akira moved for the strings running down Akihito’s fleece jacket like makeshift buttons, but Akihito put his hand on his wrist.

“That’s not necessary.”

“I insist.” He brushed Akihito’s hand away, untied the knot at the collar, and loosened the leather string woven down, side to side, all in a few swift motions.

Akihito’s heart thudded at his ribcage and he couldn’t tell if it was anger, panic, or _euphoria_. He went with fleeting confusion and tried to push the man away, but he couldn’t find his strength when his hands landed on Akira’s arms. He tried words. “Really, I—"

“You’ll be more comfortable this way,” and before he knew it, his near-limp arms were lifted over his head, and the long-sleeved, fur-coated jacket was gone. Then, so were his soft-leather boots and his lightly-coated pants. Akira had mercy at his britches and thin, baggy undershirt. Really, it took the man less than twenty beats and Akihito was rendered helpless and unbraced.

Did Akira seem to be in a hurry? What was the rush, exactly? Before he could finish his thoughts, it hit him: the ultimate wave of exhaustion. The hand he held out in poor attempts to stop the man from undressing him slowly dropped as his body lost energy. He couldn’t sit up anymore, Akira braced him upright and watched as his eyes glaze over.

“I—” Akihito stammered.

“Why don’t you lie down?” It was all Akihito could do to nod absently as Akira eased him down onto the sheets and his head on the pillow. And that was that.

He watched silently as the light dimmed in Akihito’s eyes, and they closed without a fight. The last ten or so minutes admittedly had his heart rate up; it had to be the eerie countdown in his head from when Akihito first knocked the whiskey back to when he started swaying. He wouldn’t outright tell him about the soporific—but he wouldn’t lie about it either. If Akihito asked, he would tell the truth: his temperature was still high, and he needed rest. There was more to it of course, but he didn’t need to know all of it. For now, a rising temperature was as good a reason as any.

He grasped Akihito’s ankles still hanging off the bed, and propped them up gently with the rest of him. He had time to cover him in the bed-foot blanket before the cave-rock door burst open in a scurry of commotion and ice particles.

“Sire!” Kowatashi and Nishigaki raced in from behind the large cat and took aim, green and dark navy encircling either of their arms, pointed at the beast that had broken through a signature-oriented, rick door.

“Don’t shoot her,” Akira called to his men. She hadn’t pounced, but her stance, retracted claws, and bared fangs were no friendly gesture. She crept closer and growled low when she zeroed in on Akihito, unresponsive with Akira’s hand by his head. Akira slowly moved his hands up shoulder level and took a step away from the bed. “As I thought, you’re his familiar, aren’t you?” The beast’s eyes sharpened. “And I don’t suppose you could understand me?” She stamped her front paw and outright _roared_ , her razor-sharp canines and impressive volume emphasizing each other, and reminding him and his party that she was a force to be reckoned with. “Right then.” It had truly been a while since his mouth went dry and his verbiage came up short. Elemental beasts were said to harbor untold power, capable of decimating a powerful mage on a whim. She could’ve easily taken out his entire party by now and walked away with but a few scathes. It was by some grace of the gods that these creatures could be reasoned with. 

“You should know, he’s very ill.”

The cat huffed, visible icy air expelling from her mouth and nostrils. She squared her stance, strode over the head of the bed, and sniffed at Akihito’s neck; Akira retreated to a respective distance. Deep sunset eyes regarded the sleeping man, then the beast opened her mouth—and sank her teeth into his arm.

Akira, Kowatashi, and Nishigaki just stared, stunned; Akihito moaned in pain, unable to rouse from under the influence of the soporific. Akira was the first to move at her, but she released her jaw and snapped her head back at him, growling in a brimful warning. Akira’s eyes were on Akihito. What bit of blood trickled from his arm dissipated before it could reach the sheets. The wound sealed itself, his flesh closing together as quickly as it was ripped apart. After a moment, it never happened, and Akira was left thinking he’d just seen things. If it weren’t for Akihito’s color running a slightly more natural shade, and his breathing easing out in smoother gasps, he would have had no clue what to make of the young mage’s sense of choice in life lifetime familiars. The blasted thing had healing abilities. It was no wonder they were worth five-times their weight in gold on the black market or hunted to extinction for their magnificent furs and legendary healing hearts.

The mighty creature nudged at Akihito’s chin, sniffing at his breath. Then, she straightened and turned her deep, bright-tulip, silk eyes on Akira. Her gaze was nothing short of menacing and ferocious, yet still thickly intelligent. Akira stood his ground.

“My Lord! Get to cover!”

“Sire, please step back!”

“Nishigaki, Kowatashi, stand down.”

“But, my Lord! —"

“This is not up for debate, Kowatashi. You will disarm yourselves.” Nishigaki was the first to come through, whereas Kowatashi continued to form green rings of concentrated magic around his arm, but eventually relented, and powered down.

The beast pawed close to the Lord, closer than they were that morning, and locked gazes. Akira waited, breaths caught in a moment, clashing with their temperatures. The cat’s eyes were so characterized with colorful, glowing frivolity, that the Lord almost didn’t notice when they started to genuinely glow. He felt it: her magical pull, its magnitude throwing him off-axis. That’s when she showed him; her fears, drives, and ambitions. She had seen many a millennia, that was more time than his fickle human mind could comprehend. She had familiarized to generations; and nobody, absolutely nobody, was to threaten that leniency. _Akihito_ was that leniency and Akira was to know exactly where she stood: by Akihito, always.

“Incredible,” was his only acknowledgment, following a loud _crack_ behind them. Calvary perked and craned her neck, all eyes darted to the sleeping mage. “If I may?” Akira stepped past the taller cat and to where the small, leaner bard lie turning in the sheets and gathering magic above his head. “Shuai, surround the gathering. Kore, supply Shuai,” he barked. “Kĩĩnai—” he turned to the cave door and peered out to find the girl gathering minuscule rolls of magic, giggling and impressing herself with the tiny sparks of energy. “Well, do as you would then.” He stepped up to the enlarged, deep-red gathering encased by Shuai’s icy green. The large, protective beast flicked her tail and watched intently at all their movements, prepared to pounce at anything that perturbed her.

Akira was careful not to touch the magic gatherings above Akihito’s head as he reached for the space in between. He rested three fingers on Akihito’s knit brow, a heady sheen of sweat reflected the violet glow of his hand as he gathered the spell. With his objective in mind, he reached out to him. At first, it was just a turmoil canvas of abstractivity and darkness, Akira couldn’t get through to him. Then, in a vibrant flash of red, he could feel it: The fear, trepidation. Confusion; his _pain._ He focused on it, letting it become his surroundings, letting it consume him for a brief moment of agony.

“Sire!”

“I have it,” he assured Shuai behind clenched eyes.

Finally, he grasped it with all he had, that pain and fear that tormented Akihito for years. It was strong, be he managed to take it from him. For a flash second, he could see the reoccurring phantasm—red skies, screaming people, tall, terrifying trees that grabbed and stuck, and an endless plummet into the unknown. A true nightmare, built from raw fear and genuine trauma. Akira originally thought that perhaps the nightmares could’ve come from the surēbu camps. But now he could see it wasn’t so. This was something of a _loss_ the boy had suffered. Akira couldn’t replenish what was gone, but he could restore peace of mind. If he could manage to successfully trap the magically-charged emotions through the bond, that was.

“Kore! The stone!”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Nishigaki take his hands off Shuai’s back and reach into his hip pouch. He pulled out a stone lit with white, neutral magic, tossed it in Akira’s direction, and quickly reverted back to supplying Shuai with energy. Akira reached out and grasped the stone with his free hand. Before the angry magic concentration (that Shuai was doing his best to contain) could get any bigger, he activated the stone, charging it a deep purple, and threw it past the green barrier. He casted his power over Akihito’s magic through the bond, and focused his energy on trapping the growing swarm of red inside the stone.

He managed to make a dent, the magic mass imploding slowly as the stone gathered it. He almost had it, beads of sweat dotting the Lord’s temple. Suddenly, things took a turn for the worse; with the swarm exposed to outside magic, it started to corrupt right before everyone’s eyes. If a gathering of that magnitude corrupted entirely, it would kill the boy in seconds and drain his soul for all it was worth. The swarm would surge them and be nearly impossible to stop. To add to matters, Kore and Shuai were at their limit. Akira felt an icy air at his neck, then endured an ear-ripping roar from inches above his head. Ice surrounded Shuai’s ever-green barrier, encasing it in a frigid barrier of its own. Shuai cracked, no longer able to maintain the spell; he fell lax to the ground and Kore knelt behind him, holding him up by the shoulders.

The gathering was no longer visible to him, but Akira could sense it through the ice casing via the bond. The elemental beast was slowly _purifying_ the gathering’s corruptions. It was a brief moment of stupefied _awe_ that delayed the Lord before it clicked, and he focused on trapping the gathering once more. With the help of the cat, they’d managed in moments, and the ice broke away before the now blood-red stone dropped. Akira caught it before it dropped on Akihito’s neck.

 _What could have been so grave,_ he thought, _that it would plunge someone such you into a helpless, corrupted state?_

He heard a large _thud_ behind his boots, and his thoughts broke. He craned his neck to see what it was. The beast had collapsed, her weight sprawled on the cave floor, her eyes heavy.

Akira regarded her and knelt down in front of her muzzle. “It was you who dispersed the magic before it could corrupt all the time he was enslaved, wasn’t it?” Her eyes floated to his, and the passive, quiet look told him all he needed to know. He held up the stone. “You knew better than to disperse it before we could trap it for good,” he smirked, impressed, and turned the stone over in his fingers, gazing closely at the tiny, magical red storm trapped inside. “I suppose he’ll need this eventually, however.”

Calvary sat up and rested on the elbows of her front legs. She snuffed at the stone in Akira’s hand and opened her mouth. Thick, chilly mist flooded from her jowls and inundated his forearm. He couldn’t see his own hand in front of him, and the physical state of the stone faded from the feel of his fingertips. When the mist let up, it was gone.

He may have been urged to question it, but it had been a long, early morning, and they were all due for some rest. He glanced over at his two men, both recovering fairly well; then he looked past the door to Malina. She stared back at him, looking like she’d just lost her ever-loving mind and was on the verge of tears from watching _whatever_ the hell they just did while being on the worst trip of a lifetime. Indeed, they were _all_ due for some rest.


	8. ---

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it even okay to do a Q&A on Archive?

So, obviously, there was no update. And there won't be until the 20th (next-next Sunday) so no update this time around. And I know I'm only speaking to less than fifty people who maybe keep up with this, but I still feel an obligation. So... Q&A time! Ask a question about the storyor something you're curious about; I'll be more than happy to clarify (without the spoilers, of course, ha you thought). Hell, go ahead and ask about whats in your mind. And yes, I'm aware I'll only get like-- _five questions._ But suppose it's not the quantity that counts. I'll get back to you this Sunday (the 13th)


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